Watch a Prospective Democratic Nominee for Treasury Secretary Praise Paul Ryan… to a Point

There was no real danger of liberals coming around to love Erksine Bowles. The Merrill Lynch connections. The entitlement state doomsaying. Etc, etc. And the edited version of a year-old Bowles speech in North Carolina will fray the heartstrings even more.

Like I said, though – it’s edited. The version Jake Tapper puts up here clips together a bit of Bowles praising Paul Ryan with a bit of him critiquing Barack Obama.

What does he say between the edits? That Ryan “got there [to a balanced budget] in a different way than we [Bowles-Simpson] did.” Bowles cites two things. “He decided he wouldn’t cut the military budget at all. In fact, let it increase a little. That was $1 trillion he had to make up for in a 10-year period.” He also didn’t apply new tax revenue to deficit reduction, which meant that “he got the money by cutting the income support programs and the non-defense discretionary spending by more than I would.”

This doesn’t much change what Bowles meant. Ryan tried to balance the budget; Barack Obama didn’t. It’s those devilish little details, though – it’s those aspects that only liberal economic writers seemed to care about before Ryan got picked.